May 19th was the night I found her.
“Are you doing anything for her first birthday?”
“Oh, probably just something small,” she answers, eyes darting away as if unsure whether her words belong in the open. “With me, her, and my roommate.” I have to lean a little closer to her to hear her answer, her voice hesitant.
“You don’t want to do something with all your friends?” I ask her, unsure why she’s in the bar surrounded by people yet seems so lonely.
“Um,” she starts, still avoiding looking at me. “No, not really.”
“It will be special no matter who’s there.”
“It’s just,” she starts, and I don’t say anything—don’t even move. I don’t want to stop her from saying whatever she’s about to, scared that if I even breathe, she’ll keep it to herself. “I don’t have many friends.”
I look around, confused why she doesn’t consider the people she’s out with tonight as friends. “What about everyone here?”
Rumi looks around, and I take a moment to look down at Evee whose eyes look heavy, her lids drooping as she leans back against her mom’s chest, and my own chest aches at the sight, as if my heart is physically expanding.
She turns back to face me. “Well, Ava’s my friend. My manager and roommate too,” she explains, pointing over her shoulder at the redhead behind her talking to Drew. “And I don’t know Drew or Mia very well, or their husbands. They’re all my boss’ friends.” She looks down at Evee, carefully taking the coaster out of her clenched hand, removing it slowly from her fingers to not wake her as she drifts asleep.
“They could be your friends too,” I say, even though what I really want to do is tell her that I’ll be her friend.
At the moment, looking at the sadness clouding those blue eyes, I want to tell her I’ll be anything she could ever want or need—her and Evee—but I keep my mouth closed.
“Maybe,” she says with a sigh. “And what about you? I hear you’re back in town after being gone for a while. What brought you back?”
You.
But I can’t say that. I can’t tell her that finding her, saving her, was the catalyst for me being in this bar, right here and now.
I can’t tell her that thinking about thehappiest ever aftersfor her and her daughter were the only thing that got my mind off losing my best friend, pulled me out of my self-pity and wallowing, and kicked my ass back into gear.
Needing to clear the emotion clogging my throat, I cough into my fist. “I needed to get my life back on track.” It’s a cop-out of an answer, one that I’ve been telling everyone—including myself—for the last eighteen months yet saying them to Rumi is the first time it feels like a complete lie.
She nods but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. There’s something in her eyes that tells me she understands the words I can’t bring myself to say.
Something that tells me she knows how hard it is to start over after you’ve almost killed yourself trying to use the burned and broken pieces leftover to rebuild, doing it over and over until you realize there’s nothing left.
That you can’t keep burying yourself in the ashes, and that it’s time for something new.
“And I don’t have a lot of friends either,” I add, hoping she knows that I understand her too.
“I find that hard to believe,” she says, and I watch as a tinge of pink appears on the apples of her cheeks. She rolls her lips together, her eyes slightly widening as if she didn’t mean to say the words.
I don’t let her dwell on it too long—more for my sake than hers. “It’s true. I haven’t made a new friend in a while. I think I forgot how.”
“I think I never actually learned how.” The admission hits me harder than anything else she says tonight, her words loaded with truths that I don’t think she’s ready to share.
CHAPTER 10
RUMI
I hopeAva is too busy with her conversation with Drew right now to hear anything I am saying. I just know if she could hear me, she’d be thinking of all the different ways to tell me how I have no idea what I’m doing talking to this man right now.
When I first saw Jack this morning after he ran into Hey Honey’s, there was an instant attraction for me.
How couldn’t there be?
I think anyone would see this man and agree.
